Climate Justice & Innovation Lead

About Oxfam

Oxfam is a global movement of people who won’t live with the injustice of poverty. Together we save and rebuild lives in disasters. We help people build better lives for themselves. We speak out on the big issues that keep people poor, like inequality, discrimination against women and climate change. And we won’t stop until every person on the planet can live without poverty.

Oxfam GB is a member of the international confederation Oxfam.

RIL: Response Innovation Lab is the world’s largest network of field-based humanitarian innovation platforms.

Our teams work on the ground inside some of the most challenging contexts in the world to connect the demand for solutions to key humanitarian challenges with the supply of innovations from social entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, and other sources. We operate under the assumption that no one understands the challenges facing vulnerable communities better than their members and the people who support them and that the ingenuity, knowledge, and dedication of local innovators help them come up with the most apt solutions.

RIL helps build functional humanitarian innovation ecosystems through comprehensive mapping of actors, collaborative exploration of challenges, neutral brokering of solutions to humanitarian implementers, and rigorous evidence generation. We heavily customize our tools and processes for each of our contexts and invest in recruiting the very best teams of forward-thinking and socially conscious staff. Their hard work has leveraged the contributions of collaborators from all types of organizations to help identify, test, and scale solutions for previously intractable challenges. From providing the Somali education system with a real-time school attendance tracking system to helping refugees in Uganda access nutritious foods year-round through solar dryers to allowing Iraqi entrepreneurs an opportunity to develop viable green agriculture technologies, Response Innovation Lab platforms have successfully challenged the assumption that fragile countries must necessarily rely on foreign solutions to solve their problems. When the right ecosystem is in place to support locally based actors, it turns out they can.

OUR TEAM

The Iraq response Innovation Lab is led by Oxfam in Iraq. The Lab in Iraq is part of a Global initiative of 4 other innovation Labs in 4 other countries.

The invective of the Iraq Lab is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian and development programming by supporting the development, testing, piloting and scaling of innovations which are addressing locally identified challenges.

The Lab offers 3 interrelated services:

1.Provision of seed funding, through a dedicated funding mechanism the Iraq Innovation Fund to support the development, testing and piloting of innovative projects. Funding is supplemented with technical assistance, incubation of projects and advisory services to innovators, including access to the Innovation Lab facilities to help them design and implement solutions for Iraq.

2.Act as a central hub for innovations in Iraq: Bring diverse actors together to collaborate on identifying humanitarian challenges ripe for innovation, convene and connect innovators and humanitarian actors, set-up regular innovation forums.

3.Pairing challenges with innovations: provide access to a network and database of existing proven solutions; pairing humanitarian actors with tested global or local innovations that meet their challenges

Job Purpose

The Climate change Innovation lead – acts as the key anchor in this discipline, leading Oxfam’s Climate Change strategy in Iraq and project interventions. He / she will be the lead expert in the area of innovation in development and humanitarian actions and managing key programs and initiatives related to Water, agriculture, vulnerable livelihoods, food systems.

To consolidate the establishment of the Iraq Response Innovation lab initiative in Iraq by leading and delivering on the Innovation Lab operational, programmatic and fundraising strategy. This include stakeholder management, identification and support to sector relevant innovations, management and administration of the Innovation Lab Pool fund, coordination and integration with other Oxfam programs and country teams, fundraising, management and implementation of the IRIL program activities and coordination with the Global Response Innovation Lab consortium members.

The Climate Justice and Innovation Lead will play a critical role in cultivating innovation capabilities within the country programme and promoting the value and influence innovation can offer across the various programme portfolios in Iraq. This requires a focus on both the culture in the organisation and a strategy that will drive change and growth of the existing innovation work.

Core Details

Location: Erbil

Internal Grade: As per Oxfam Salary Scale C2 Global

Contract type: Fixed Term Contract

Hours of work: 40 hours per week.

This role reports to: Deputy Country Director, Programmes

Staff reporting to this post: Climate Justice Officer; Entrepreneur & Innovation Officer.

Annual budget for the post: N/A

Key relationships/interactions: DBS checks (for roles based in the UK):

Screening checks: All successful candidates will be screened through Refinitiv World-Check One to comply with counter terrorism and financial sanctions regulations.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Technical

• Develop and deliver the Climate Resilient Innovation strategy for Iraq that builds on and supports the capacities and priorities of country programme.
• The Climate Justice and Innovation Lead will serve as a broker in their area of technical expertise to facilitate integration of Climate friendly innovation practices to programmes.
• Ensure integration of best practices in country programmes from form its global interventions and programmes and development and strengthening of promoting inclusive and sustainable food system transformation, greater and better collaboration with the private sector, medium, small and micro enterprises and rural market development.
• Maintain strategic relationships with Oxfam members and other development actors.
• Support grant management, program operations, and learning and development processes as required.
• Work with Oxfam Country Director to define and implement innovation strategy, projects and methodologies that envision, develop and incubate innovative ideas. This includes collaborating on new product design, social business ideas and types of response programming, designing and leading research and other ideas which improve humanitarian and early recovery works in Iraq.
• Work with the Response Innovation Lab Central Support Unit to ensure IRIL’s adherence to RIL’s global vision, ways of working and ongoing initiatives while developing context-specific tools and approaches to the Iraq context
• Provide full project management oversight to ensure excellence in execution of all Iraq Lab plans and programmes. Lead in project planning and coordination to ensure timely and quality implementation of all program activities. This will include identifying and placing skilled personnel who are able to effectively advise and manage Iraq Lab programmes and aligning partner engagements with Lab objectives.
• Focus on supporting the overall social innovation ecosystem in Iraq through IRIL’s mapping, convening, brokering, innovation support and evidence generation capacities. Accelerate efforts to further embed IRIL into the network of innovation hubs and resilience/climate adaptation implementers in Iraq as the go-to marketplace connecting innovation demand with local supply of solutions.

Support the scale-up (through Oxfam programming but also through third parties) of successful pilots and documentation and sharing of those which fail.

• Lead and facilitate the promotion of the digital transformations in the humanitarian and development programs of the Oxfam programming.
• Develop and implement a young people engagement strategy to effectively ensure their participation in the Innovation Lab activities.
• Lead and coordinate the development of the communication strategy of the Innovation lab and manage the lab communications materials and platforms.
• In conjunction with the finance team, develop and monitor the project budget and ensure regular reporting to the donor
• Work with the technical leads of Oxfam and other consortium member when relevant to provide adequate HR oversight to the project team and partners as relevant
• Fundraise both for the Iraq Lab and the successful lab projects, including participating in calls for proposals and identifying key partnerships and donors in country.
• Serve as the main point of contact and ambassador for the Iraq Lab
• Manage risks for the Iraq Lab, discussing and mitigating these with the Oxfam Country Director.
• Helping Oxfam Iraq programme teams becoming more active early adopters of innovations
• Lead and facilitate the development of business opportunity feedback study for innovative approaches in Iraq such as green energy, green jobs, and other friendly environmental solutions.

Leadership

Partnership Management

• Develops and maintains a network of strategic partnerships that can help advance Oxfam’s Climate Justice strategic goal and its rural innovation and transformation agenda.
• Building partnerships with centres of excellence, complementary technical organizations and specialized departments at both public and private sector including financial institutions, NGOs, Universities and private enterprises.
• Lead in ensuring effective management of resources. This will include providing leadership to effective management of sub grantee agreements or contracts with partners.

People Management

• Lead on people management at the Innovation Lab through support to recruitment of technical specialists and technical leadership/capacity development, coaching and mentoring of new / reporting staff and play a supervisory role in evaluation of performance of the team under their purview.

Learning & Reporting

• Maintain accurate documentation of best practices, results, learning and impact of programs.
• Document strategic thinking, dashboard reports, status of innovation implementation and matters of partnership, leadership or management concern of the Iraq Lab.
• Regularly share the lessons learned as the lab progresses, to become a resource for others in and out of the RIL network

Other

• Required to adhere to Oxfam’s principles and values as well as the promotion of gender justice and women’s rights
• Understanding of and commitment to adhere to equity, diversity, gender, child safety and staff health and wellbeing principles.

Skills & Competencies

Essential

• Advanced university degree in innovation, international development and management, business administration, social policy, entrepreneurships, information technology, communications or related fields is desirable.
• At least 5 (Five) years of progressively responsible experience in the field of climate change adaptation and innovation and climate resilience work.
• Specialism in the formulation of technical guidance and advise on Innovation, incubation of climate resilient interventions into development programmes; market creation and development and partnerships with the private sector.
• A team player and self-starter with good networking skills and project management skills
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills
• Capable of working independently and with demonstrated experience engaging a wide range of stakeholders.
• Excellent commination and writing skill, able to synthetize information from various sources and produce high quality reports/papers.
• Excellent project management skills.
• Experience in building and managing partnerships. Strong leadership skills; experience in leading consortiums
• Ability to solve complex problems and to exercise independent judgment.
• Ability to influence and liaise effectively with key stakeholders and representation in high profile environments.
• Fluency in written and spoken English, Arabic would be an advantage.
• Ability to represent the lab to a variety of stakeholders in a range of forums
• Able to travel in all regions of Iraq and on a short notice
• High organizational skills and ability to priorities workload and meet deadlines. Ability to work under pressure
• Able to work on a cross-cultural environment and with people from all backgrounds, and is aware and supportive of inclusiveness principles
• Good knowledge of Microsoft office tools ( PPT, Excel, word, etc.)
• Strong interested in Innovations

Desirable

• Experience working with and managing Innovation projects
• Good understanding of innovation and the issues and challenges around it.
• Strong Entrepreneurship skills
• Experience working in the private sector and with start-ups
• Familiar with new technology-based innovation and innovative approaches/methodologies
• Has already an existing network of diverse actors operating in Iraq
• Out of the Box thinker
• Knowledge of the Iraqi and Middle Eastern context is desirable

Key Attributes

• Ability to demonstrate sensitivity to cultural differences and gender issues, as well as the commitment to equal opportunities
• Ability to demonstrate an openness and willingness to learn about the application of gender/gender mainstreaming, women’s rights, and diversity for all aspects of development work
• Commitment to Oxfam’s safeguarding policies to ensure all people who come into contact with Oxfam are as safe as possible